| abstract
| - Padmé found Mace Windu not in the war room as she had first suspected, but in one of the hangars with several other Jedi. She stopped quickly, Nju was not among them so there would be no one to stop her. “Master Windu, I need to talk to you,” she said. “What is it?” he asked impatiently. “We’re in a hurry. Obi-Wan has just defeated Grievous, we’re on our way to make sure Palpatine returns powers to the Senate.” “He won’t,” Padmé told him, she heard Anakin stop behind her. “What makes you so sure?” Windu asked sceptically. But before she could explain further an alarm sounded somewhere in the Temple. Renust Nju ran in breathlessly. “Dooku has escaped!” Nju said in astonishment Mace looked from Nju, to Padmé to Anakin who was just standing there saying nothing. “How could this have happened?” Mace asked Nju, he then dismissed his own question. “We need to find him.” He started to leave the room with Nju and the others. Padmé saw her chance slipping. “But wait! Master Windu!” The Jedi Master didn’t even look back. Grinding her teeth in frustration, Padmé ran towards the door as Kuan Yin was leaving. Anakin moved forward to stop her. “Padmé, don’t!” “Anakin, let go of me!” For the second time that day she struggled out of his grip, tighter than the first one had been. She ran forward to grab Kuan Yin by the arm. “Padmé, what is it?” she asked. “I have to get going with—” “I haven’t told you what I found out,” Padmé said quickly. “Palpatine is a Sith Lord.” “What?” Kuan Yin stared at her. “Are you sure?” “Without a doubt,” Padmé said, “but there’s more, Master Nju is his other apprentice Darth Typhon.” There, she had said it, the secret she had carried for five years because if she told it to anyone she would not be believed. It was at this auspicious moment that every light in the Temple went out. The room was flooded with the light of the late afternoon casting eerie red glows on their faces. “How long have you known?” Kuan Yin asked in a small voice. “He gave me this!” Padmé told them, pulling back part of her right glove to reveal her artificial hand. “I saw him on Imbroglio talking to Sidious,” Padmé continued, “I didn’t believe it at first, but when he confirmed it himself. He let me live because he knew I couldn’t tell anyone.” “But you could have told me!” Anakin said angrily. “I would have believed you!” “Would you?” Kuan Yin asked him, but she turned back to Padmé and started for the door. “There may be still time to tell Mace, but at least we know now how Dooku escaped.” In the Temple, Masters quickly tried to get younglings together, fortunately being Force-trained their minds were calm and this was not a difficult job. But it was difficult for R2-D2 to find a still-functioning computer outlet, three others they had found had been tampered with, the socket was melted away. “Here’s one!” Threepio said, waving an arm frantically. “Please do this quickly, Artoo so we can hide somewhere. I really don’t like what’s going on here.” Artoo inserted his arm into the socket just as several screams were heard at one end of the corridor followed by the running of little feet. “Hurry up, Artoo!” Threepio urged, banging on the astromech’s dome. Artoo tittered that he was doing the best he could when the screams grew louder. Younglings were running past them, looking back at…Threepio turned around and almost fell over with surprise. It was Count Dooku, several Jedi were engaged in combat with him and he was winning within a matter of seconds. It did not take long for Dooku to sink his lightsaber into one foe before he was onto the next. “We’re doomed!” he moaned. But Artoo didn’t think so, he pushed against Threepio’s legs and led the frightened protocol droid into a side room. Threepio felt relieved but the screams continued to echo through the Temple. “Shouldn’t we do something?” Threepio asked his counterpart. “Here, younglings!” Yoda called, guiding his hovering chair through the corridor with a crowd of children around him. “Follow me, know safe place to hide I do.” Padmé and Anakin passed him as they followed Kuan Yin out of the Temple. Several exits they tried had already been barred, and Mace Windu was nowhere to be found. Surely he can’t be dead, Padmé thought frantically. Yet suddenly finding Mace Windu alive seemed to be the least of their worries. In their path was Renust Nju. Padmé took this as her first opportunity in five years to vent her feelings against him. “You!” She walked towards him, not caring in the least what happened. “This is your doing, isn’t it?” He didn’t reply, he merely watched her dispassionately. “Have you looked around?” Padmé demanded. “Have you seen the bodies everywhere?” “Padmé.” Kuan Yin gently moved her former apprentice behind her, she nodded to Nju. “We’ll just be on our way.” “No,” Nju said. He took out his lightsabers and ignited them, still coloured blue like the last time he had fought Padmé. It had been necessary for him to keep them this way to continue the deception. But now there was no need, now he could expose himself as what he truly was. Kuan Yin understood his words. “You two go on,” she murmured, getting out her own lightsaber and activating it. “I’ll hold him as much as I can.” “No, Master—” “Do as I say, Padmé!” Kuan Yin warned, bringing up the green blade of her lightsaber. “But—” “Come on!” Anakin pulled her away and down the corridor. “NOOOO!” Padmé screamed, fighting Anakin’s grip. But he was too strong for her. For a moment Padmé was fourteen again and she was facing her Master’s destroyer. A being—no creature that seemed to expose hatred and fear as it moved. She heard the taunts, the clash of the blades, heard her Master’s death cry. And then…the long blank stare as she turned back. Why had she turned to look? Why did she have to see her Master’s murderer standing over the body like a victor? For one moment she saw not the smooth features of Renust Nju, but the scared face of Darth Maxah. And she was smiling. Mace was doing what he could despite not having found Dooku yet, getting the children in safe places and reminding the older ones to arm themselves in case of further attacks. Padmé’s nightmare was the form of Maxah, Anakin’s was the attack on Coruscant, now Mace Windu was facing his own nightmare: the fall of the Jedi Order. A Jedi was not just what Mace Windu was, it formed the core of his entire identity. There was no other way he knew to think, act and behave but as a Jedi. But for one moment, one tiny spot on the scope of his life he felt merely human. And vulnerable. But being a Jedi he never let it show. “Master Windu?” Mace quickly turned his head. He felt out with the Force, sensing even the tiles on the floor. He knew that voice, and he knew that presence. “Dooku?” The former Jedi stepped out into the light of the deserted corridor, his arms hung limply at his sides. There was no sign of a lightsaber. Mace stood likewise, it would only take a split-second for Mace to get his own weapon. “That's why you let yourself be captured, wasn't it?” Mace asked him. “I knew there was something wrong with you being taken alive. I couldn’t have done it.” “Really?” Dooku smiled quietly. “I would have preferred you to have come after me yourself. You know I always preferred an educated audience.” “Your pride seems not to have lessened,” Mace remarked. “It’s quite a pleasant surprise to see old friends haven’t changed,” Dooku averred. “Friends?” The Jedi Master challenged. “I don’t think you have any, Dooku and I doubt if you ever did.” “Still that arrogance,” Dooku commented. “You haven’t changed either.” “At least I’m not like you.” Mace narrowed his eyes into slits. “I haven’t joined the Sith.” “Perhaps I am the one who made the right choice,” Dooku suggested lightly. “We shall see.” The two combatants watched each other for a moment, not moving, not speaking and no more than two metres between them. Then with a loud shout, Mace leapt at him, arms out-stretched and lightsaber whirling in a purple blur. Dooku clashed against him, his red blade moving quickly to block the Jedi Master’s blows as he took several backward steps. Dooku attacked, his movements quick, clear and precise and entangling Mace’s purple blade with his own red one. He smiled, his face lit up with the red and purple light as he held his postion, pressing hard, and harder… Mace Windu screwed up his face with the force that Dooku was placing on his blade, then he span back in a circle until he was behind Dooku. Yet the Sith was ready with a quick slashing attack that Mace knew was as false as it looked, he merely took one blow at Dooku’s lightsaber before whirling around to face him at his back. Count Dooku may have been the master of the saber-to-saber style of Form II, developed millennia ago at the newly present Sith, yet Mace was more than a match for him. The dark-skinned Jedi Master had developed his own form, a variant of Form VII also known as Juyo. It was known amongst his students as Vaapad, after a devastating multi-armed creature on Sarapin. One could never know how many arms a vaapad had it had until you killed it. That was the exterior Vaapad, but not the core. Vaapad veered dangerously close to the dark side as the user had to allow themselves to enjoy the fight. They had to give fuel to their emotions and become inside the turbulent storm they appeared to be. It was an intense contest, as well as an engaging one. The master of the old style against the creator of the new, and it was a contest that Mace knew he could not lose.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)